This blog began as an online newspaper about Kings Cross, Sydney. It now focuses on the deep problems of drug prohibition - which are so intrinsic to Kings Cross anyway - and exposes the many flaws in the prohibitionist argument, and the pseudo-science that governments fund to prop up their unjust and ineffective laws. Comments are welcome, but please be polite! Content on this site reflects only the views of the writer and are not necessarily those of the editor or any other organisation.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Amarni bikies make billions from drugs

The beautifully stylised Nomads bike pack,
parked in Kings Cross in July 2004

Suit-wearing bikies working within the corporate system are committing major international fraud to establish money-laundering networks to process billions of dollar profit made mainly from methamphetamines.

And while the police know about it, they are too wary of the bikies to do anything about it, because the gangs use better counter-surveillance techniques than the police to identify undercover officers and target their families with threats.

This is the alarming scenario presented in a new book, Above the law by Ross Coulthard (also spelt 'Coulthart' on the bookselling websites) and Duncan McNab.

One of the scams involved the identity theft of all the customers of an Australian mortgage broker. These identities were then used to buy and sell properties, resulting in drug profits being cleansed into legitimate money.

Nothing has been done about this operation.

The new book, sequel to Dead man running by the same authors, describes how the bikies have become a major international franchise underpinned by massive drug profits and the ability to intimidate rivals and police with extreme violence.

But, as usual, the elephant in the room, prohibition, is not mentioned in any of the online blurbs or in an interview with the author broadcast today by Deborah Cameron on the 702 Morning Show.

The bikies are clearly the Al Capones of modern times but the media remain unable to make that link explicit, throwing their hands up in helplessness against a threat that incidentally makes them millions in book deals and dramatic headlines.

The idea that repealing prohibition would stop the income-generating engine of the world's biggest criminal threat just does not make an appearance. The availability of cheaper, cleaner, regulated and controlled drugs, would put the bikies out of business and probably not increase use of the drugs.

The bikies had teamed up with Lebanese criminal gangs who, according to Mr Coulthard, style themselves as bikies because they know the police leave those groups alone. This would explain why the Parramatta Nomads lost their bikes and became Notorious, a gang closely associated with Kings Cross and the Ibrahim brothers – these Nike bikies were not hardcore devotees, but were more into style than bike culture.

Blurbs on the bookseller sites describe the sheer scale of the illegal enterprises:

Far surpassing the threats posed by the Mafia, Russian syndicates, Chinese Triads and Japanese Yakuza, outlaw motorcycle gangs are now being acknowledged as the greatest current organised crime threat. Their international empire is both sophisticated and bloody and brutal. It is also both strategic and opportunistic - where they cannot dominate, they broker alliances.

While such books are valuable sources of well researched information, they are part of the problem so long as they present it as an eternal cops vs robbers battle without pointing to the real foundation of the problem -- prohibition.

Such analysis would make it crystal clear to uninformed politicians and people that the harms of prohibition are indeed worse than the harms of drugs.

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About Me

Hello again. world. I am a journalist, designer and photographer eking out a living by grazing on economic opportunities that come my way. I have run my business, Superkern Design Pty Ltd, since 1991. The gross oversupply of designers being pumped out by a dysfunctional university system has made it very difficult to survive as a designer since the late '90s, but on balance I like the advantages of working for myself at home. The older I get, the more human affairs look farcical. The average person is pretty damn average, you see. But there you go. I try to inject some commonsense into the public discourse which, at least in Sydney, is increasingly dominated by moral panics and middle-class agendas of control and gentrification. I don't quite understand why people from alternative subcultures tend to be quite happy for the middle class to live their lives as they wish, but the reverse is not true. And yet this same middleclass constantly use the words "diversity" and "tolerance". It's a funny old world.
See my Superkern and photoart sites linked above.